Gabriel's Landing

New here? The tutorial plays the first turns with you, one step at a time, in a gentle galaxy.

You lead the Aurum Concord against 2, 4 or 6 rival empires, depending on the galaxy size you choose: small, medium or large. An empire falls when it has no planets and no colony ships.
There are two ways to win, chosen when you start a game. Total victory: be the last empire standing. Dominance: hold 60% of all the galaxy's habitable planets, or be the last standing; if a rival reaches 60% first, it wins. In a dominance game your share shows at the top of the screen.
Each turn, give your orders, then press End turn. Everything happens at once: your orders, the rivals' orders, battles, sieges, growth.
Industry (IU) pays for ships and research. You earn 2 IU a turn plus 1 for every person on your planets. Unspent IU carries over.
Expand: settle free planets with colony ships, and let colonies grow. Population is income, and every 4 people in a system let its shipyard launch one more ship a turn.
The galaxy is three-dimensional. Stars sit above and below the galactic plane; the faint line under each star shows its height. Rotate the map to see the shape (Controls tab).
Fog of war: you see one jump around your planets and fleets. Elsewhere the map shows what you last saw, which may be out of date.
The turn report in the orders panel lists what happened last turn: battles, captures, new colonies, ships built. Tap a line to jump to that star.
New game: the Game tab chooses galaxy size (3, 5 or 7 empires), victory (total or dominance) and difficulty. It also saves and loads games as files; your game also saves itself in this browser after every move. Restart this galaxy plays the same galaxy again from turn 1, and Copy link gives you a link to it, to bookmark or to challenge a friend.

Empires this turn

True totals for every empire, including what your sensors cannot see. Ships count every fleet, moving or parked; income is IU per turn.

Ship	Cost	Job
Fighter	15 IU	Fights, besieges enemy planets, guards yours
Colony ship	25 IU	Settles one planet, then it is used up
Scout	8 IU	Cheap explorer, faster when travelling alone

Ships travel in fleets along the hyperlanes, one jump a turn, or two for a fleet of only scouts. Each Hyperdrives level adds one. A fleet moves at the pace of its slowest ship.
Routes: a fleet always takes a shortest route. When several are equally short, it takes the one through the fewest stars you know to be hostile: enemy fighters or enemy planets.
Interception: a fleet passing through a star where another empire's fighters are parked is stopped there and must fight. If it survives it carries on next turn. Fighters on the move don't stop anyone, so park fighters at a chokepoint to guard it. Rivals are stopped the same way.
Send… on a fleet: choose how many of each ship, press Choose destination, tap a star. The ships you chose split off as a new fleet; the rest stay.
Merge joins fleets parked at the same star. Hold cancels a move. Undo removes your last order.
Build ships in the Shipyard of any star where you hold a planet. New ships join a parked fleet there at the end of the turn and can move the turn after.
Shipyard capacity: each system launches at most 1 ship a turn, plus 1 for every 4 people on your planets there. A homeworld of 3 launches 1 a turn; at 8 people it launches 3. A newly captured planet launches only 1, so big fleets come from your populous core and have to travel to the front. Rivals follow the same rule.

Each star has up to five planets. Tap a star twice, or press Enter system, to see them. ‹ Galaxy or Esc goes back.
Star colour hints at what you will find:

Yellow	Rich: terran and ocean worlds
Orange	Good: many habitable planets
White	Mixed
Blue-white	Poor: barren, toxic, gas giants
Red	Poor: cold and small

Habitability is the most people a planet can hold. 0 means nobody can live there. Terraforming raises it.
To colonise, get a fleet with a colony ship into the system or on its way there, tap a free planet and press Colonise. Colony ships never settle on their own.
Colonies grow by 1 person every other turn up to their habitability. Each person earns 1 IU a turn, and every 4 people in a system let its shipyard launch one more ship a turn.
On the map, each star shows a dot per planet: an empire's colour if owned, white if free and habitable, dim if nobody can live there.
Rivals can hold planets in the same system as you.

Battles happen when ships end a turn at a star where another empire has ships or inhabited planets. Fleets passing through a star do not stop to fight.
Each fighter fires once a round, for up to 6 rounds. Each inhabited planet fires 1 shot plus 1 for every 3 people, in the first round only. Scouts and colony ships never shoot.
A shot hits 40% of the time, plus 10% for each Weapons level. Fighters are shot first; colony ships and scouts only once their fighters are gone.
Sieges: after the battle, if a rival has no fighters left in the system, your fighters remove ½ person per fighter (rounded up) from one of its planets each turn. At 0 the planet is yours, with 1 person.
Choose which planet with Attack: enter the system, tap the enemy planet, press Attack on a fleet that is there or on its way. Without a choice, fighters hit the weakest planet.
Rule of thumb: bring at least as many fighters as the planet has people, and it falls in about two turns. Leave a fighter behind to guard what you take; any fighter of yours in a system protects all your planets there.

Field	Levels	Each level
Weapons	4	+10% hit chance for fighters and planets
Hyperdrives	2	+1 jump a turn for every fleet
Terraforming	3	+1 habitability on every planet you hold

A level costs 40 IU plus 40 for each level you already have in that field, and arrives at the end of the turn.
Weapons before a big war. Terraforming once you hold several colonies. Hyperdrives when your empire is spread out.

Touch: drag to pan, pinch to zoom, drag with two fingers to rotate and tilt.
Mouse: drag to pan, scroll to zoom, right-drag or Shift-drag to rotate and tilt.
Tilting the map shows the galaxy's depth: two stars that look close from above may be far apart in height. Lanes, and fleet travel times, follow the true 3D distances.
Tap a star to select it; tap it again to enter its system. Tap a planet to see it.
Tap a line in the turn report to jump to that star.
Esc cancels a send, closes a panel, or leaves a system.

Saved games

Your game also saves itself in this browser after every move.

This galaxy

Start a new galaxy

Size

Victory

Difficulty: tap to start

Easy rivals attack late and earn less. Normal rivals are your equals, with fog of war like yours. Hard rivals are the same, but see the whole map. Impossible rivals see the whole map, attack early, put most of their spare IU into fighters and earn a quarter more than you.

Tutorial

Starts a new, gentle galaxy and guides you through the first turns.

About

Gabriel's Landing

A small turn-based space 4X: explore a fogged, three-dimensional star cluster, settle colonies, research, and out-fight rival empires. Lanes join stars that are neighbours in a Gabriel graph, which gives the game its name.

Written test-first by Romilly Cocking with Claude. The rules live in a pure game core with its own tests; this page draws them with three.js and saves games with js-yaml.

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Turn report